A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry

by Sheila Isenberg

“Varian Fry was the American Schindler. He even had a list. He arrived in Vichy-controlled Marseille on Aug. 15, 1940, with $3,000 taped to his leg and a charge from the organization he worked for, the Emergency Rescue Committee, to help save some 200 endangered refugees, mainly artists, writers and intellectuals, from the Nazis. He expected to stay a month, but quickly realized that the job was much larger and more complicated than he or his sponsors had imagined... He stayed for 13 months, until he was thrown out of the country, and assisted approximately 2,000 people, among them an all-star lineup that included Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, André Breton, Arthur Koestler, Alma Mahler Werfel and Max Ophuls... A Hero of Our Own helps rescue Fry from obscurity. And with its stories of desperate exiles, menacing Nazis, forged documents and midnight escapes through the mountains, it reads at times like the script for some old Hollywood movie... Throughout his months in France, no issue haunted Fry more than the question of selection. Human needs seemed limitless; resources were not. He could not help everyone. Word quickly spread through the refugee community that an American had arrived who could offer hope, and within weeks Fry was receiving 25 letters a day, a dozen telephone calls an hour. He and his staff conducted between 100 and 120 interviews each day. Altogether, around 15,000 refugees, about half the total number residing in Vichy France, got in touch with Fry — and, in effect, it was up to him to determine who among them would live and who would die... Impossible choices, spies and counterspies, the ominous knock on the door — it was all heady stuff, and after Fry was forced to return to the United States in late 1941 he, like so many who peak early, went into decline. Nothing could ever match his glory days in France. ‘The experiences of 10, 15 and even 20 years have been pressed into one,’ he wrote. ‘Sometimes I feel as if I had lived my whole life.’ Fry drifted from job to job, from journalism to magazine editing to film production to corporate writing to high school and college teaching.” — Barry Gewen, The New York Times “Skillfully evoking a crucial moment in recent history, Sheila Isenberg tells the compelling and dramatic story of how an ordinary person, thrust into a situation of extreme danger, did extraordinary things for one year in wartime France, then drifted almost lost through the rest of his own life. It is also a story of institutionalized bureaucratic stupidity that must never be forgotten so that it is never repeated.” — Richard Holbrooke, U.S. diplomat “The only American to be honored at Yad Vashem (Israel’s Holocaust Memorial), Fry saved the lives of thousands of refugees from the Nazis. [A] moving, workmanlike account of Fry’s heroics... [Isenberg] ably renders prewar and war-time public ignorance and apathy in America and the extraordinary heroism of the sole volunteer for a dangerous rescue mission.” — Publishers Weekly “One of the BEST BOOKS of 2001. [Fry] comes across as a genuine saint; this little book is a life of a saint equal to any medieval tome.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch “A Hero of Our Own is significant for its implicit investigation into the combination of heroism, pure goodness and personal need that made Fry undertake the rescue of strangers at considerable personal risk and with no promise of reward. It also provides an unpleasant reminder that nations and their bureaucrats have both private concerns and a tremendous tropism toward indifference.

Genres: History, Holocaust, Biography, Nonfiction, World War II, Politics, Art

314 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 30, 2001

Reviews

[Maura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and informative. Also a bit depressing in light of current events - seeing some history repeat itself and not in a good way. Varian Fry was a good person but complicated. Probably bipolar, and possibly (definitely, according to his son in a recent letter to the NY Times Book Review) a closeted homosexual. Highly intelligent, arrogant, intolerant of those he saw as less gifted, plagued with fits of anger, he had a mostly friendless youth. His mother suffered from some sort of mental illness and was often absent from his life as she was hospitalized for treatment. Despite these burdens, his life stabilized somewhat in early adulthood perhaps due to his marriage to an older woman he met while in college. He volunteered to be the International Rescue Committee's point person in Marseilles when no one else wanted to go, arriving in Europe with a list of names - people to be saved from the coming Holocaust. These were artists, authors, and prominent political people who were Jewish and / or anti-Nazi. Once he arrived in France, Fry found he had to expand the list greatly as he was swamped with refugees clamoring for visas to leave France. There were no rulebooks or procedures in place for this work, so Fry had to develop his own system. As if this weren't enough challenge, he found an uncooperative State Dept and consulate (which he later blamed himself for, thinking he hadn't done enough to introduce himself there first). Hiram Bingham was one person at State who understood what was happening and was a huge help in getting people out, and for his trouble was recalled by the US and dumped into crap jobs for the rest of his career....Fry found he had to resort to illegal means to get refugees out of France, hiring a forger to make the necessary paperwork at times.

Reading this made me understand more of the background of the movie "Casablanca". Refugees needed passports, exit visas, transit letters, entry visas, and often proof of ship passage in order to successfully emigrate - a major challenge of timing since documents often expired after six months, ship schedules were erratic, and bureaucratic offices were slow-moving and stingy with paperwork. It's a wonder anyone got away. What is truly sad and shameful is how anti-Semitic and isolationist our own government was, how afraid that these refugees were spies and criminals (sound familiar?), and how many more visas could have been issued to save people from the Holocaust.

Fry continued his work even thought the IRC tried to recall him several times. Finally he was forced to leave France, partly because his own life was beginning to be in danger and partly by the US which refused to issue him a new passport until he left France. He returned to New York where his life pattern of ups and downs returned - very little in his life after France ever meant as much to him as those months there. He felt his mission was not a success because of the many people on his list he hadn't saved. Yet he is the only American honored by Israel as "Righteous Among the Nations" for his work in saving European Jewry from the Holocaust.

[Dvora Treisman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a poorly written book about an extraordinary person. I'm very sorry to say this, because Varian Fry, for all his struggles with the leadership of his organization, Vichy authorities and police, and the U.S. State Department, still managed to save almost 2,000 civilian lives during WWII. These were people who would have been shot or sent up in smoke by the Nazis for being degenerate artists (such as Chagall and Miro), anti-fascists, or Jews.

His story is told here but it is told in such a tedious manner that if you aren't committed to the subject, you probably wouldn't make it to the end. A very sad end, as it turned out.

Fry captured my interest for the brave and effective work he did despite all odds and obstacles. Shame on the American government for getting in his way while he tried to save the lives of hundreds of scientists, writers, artists, Nobel prize winners, Jews and then blocking him from making a living when he was called back to the United States. There is another book out about him and I'm waiting for it to arrive so I can read it and see if someone did him a greater service by writing a readable account of his life. Varian Fry deserves five stars plus, but I can't go higher than three for this book.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 2001.
Another in the chronicle of Varian Fry.
In 1963, Fry was charged to get drawings for the International Rescue Committee, (The Portfolio Project) from a dozen or so great artists, many of whom Fry helped to save from the Nazis. You think it would have been easy, but even so, he had a difficult time getting the art. Chagall finally gave a drawing but wouldn't sign it since he wasn't being paid.
IN 1996, U.S. Sec of State Warren Christopher apologized for State Dept treatment of Fry.
"We come to pay tribute to ... Varian Fry, a remarkable man and a remarkable American."
Possibly manic depressive.

[Cathy V · Rating 4 out of 5]

I opted to find out the true story of Varian Fry - after not being able to finish the Flight Portfolio. I was not wrong. His true story is so compelling - fiction cannot do his story justice. For the bulk of Fry's life he was a passenger and it seemed that he was put on this earth to do one great thing - and he did it. I was impressed with him and the way Ms. Isenberg told his story.

[Lisi Tesher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is very interesting but the book needs MAJOR editing! It’s ridiculously repetitive. Goes into way too much detail.
Google Varian Fry and find out who he was and what he accomplished. Done.

[Wendy Ovadia · Rating 3 out of 5]

It started out very interesting, then it was a bit difficult to continue reading in the middle. This man tried so hard to save people. It a very sad account of how the Americans refused the help the refugees in the Holocaust.

[Linotte · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was very informative and inspiring. It is refeshing to know that there were Americans who did care about what was going on in France during the Nazi occupation, and that they reflected the disgust that most Americans held for Nazi ideology. I didn't know that Varian helped people like Marc Chagall and the author of The Song of Bernadette escape. I love all of the stories of the French Resistance, and their involvement with Fry's Rescue Aid Society makes his story even more compelling.

[Gary]

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